Well,not quite yet。But they have to be and will be。Watch out for 2020.
Now even ‘semiconductors’ are Made in China
2014/08/11 By Ryu Gyeong-dong
“Now it’s ‘semiconductor.’”
China is all out to raise the semiconductor industry. According to Nihon Geizai Shimbun on August 10, SMIC, No. 1 semiconductor company in China, decided to go into the state-of-the-art LSI (large-scale integrated circuit) business for smartphone. The Chinese government will merge No. 2 and 3 LSI developers by force.
China is nicknamed the ‘factory to the world,’ but has imported most of the semiconductors that determine the performance of various industrial products.
Accordingly, the Chinese government and the Communist Party are providing omnidirectional support, e.g. raising the semiconductor industry development fund.
Last month, SMIC entered into an agreement with Qualcomm for subcontracted production of system LSI. It will start production next year using the 28nm processing technology. Last May, SMIC decided to develop the 20nm technology together with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University. The company intends to secure the microcircuit technology without relying on foreign technology.
SMIC was founded as China’s semiconductor manufacturer back in 2000. Coming off its slow start, the company generated $5.68 million in net profits in Q2 of 2014 alone, recording the black-ink balance for 9 consecutive quarters.
“Next year the 28nm LSI will drive our growth,” said Tzu-Yin Chiu, CEO of SMIC, in a telephone interview with Nikkei. “To this end, we increased our capital expenditure by 10% to $1.1 billion this year.”
China’s plan to foster the semiconductor industry foreshadows a great change in the global semiconductor market where Korea, the US, Japan and Taiwan are the key players.
The State Council of China announced the ‘National IC Industry Development Guideline’ last June, and set the sales goal of the Chinese semiconductor industry for next year at CNY 350 billion, up 40% over last year.
According to this guideline, China is planning to raise the ‘national industry investment fund,’ and foster the semiconductor industry by giving tax breaks and expanding government procurement.
The fund will be worth a total of CNY 120 billion (about KRW 20 trillion). Apart from this, local governments are trying hard to foster the semiconductor industry: e.g. Beijing raised a CNY 30 billion fund.
The Chinese government announced a plan to increase the proportion of made-in-China semiconductors to 50% by 2010 back in 2000, but failed. So it is banking heavily on this guideline.
Semiconductors determine the competitveness of various industrial products made in China. For instance, 50-100 state-of-the-art LSI chips are installed in a car. So the Chinese government cannot ignore it anymore.
According to the Chinese Semiconductor Industry Association, the proportion of local semiconductors in China was 38.3% last year. However, this figure includes the semiconductors produced by the plants of foreign manufacturers like Intel in China. According to HIS iSuppli, China’s microprocessing technology is about 2G behind global leaders and the actual supply rate based on purely Chinese capital is less than 20%.
Like this, the low localization ratio is a big burden on the Chinese economy across the board. Last year, China’s semiconductor imports amounted to about $255.7 billion. It is far more than the imports of crude oil. Ranked No. 1 in all import items, the semiconductors is deemed to have the greatest negative influence on the trade balance of China. In particular, considering that China’s crude oil self-sufficiency ratio is higher than 40%, the Chinese government and the Communist Party believe that they must reinforce the competitiveness of the semiconductor industry.
The Xi Jinping leadership thinks that the localization of semiconductors is inevitable for enhancing the level of all manufacturing industries. In particular, to prevent various cyber attacks by the West, including the US, which has become an issue recently, China is trying to increase the safety of IT products by localizing semiconductors.
대한민국 IT포털의 중심! 이티뉴스